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"Soot Success: Clean Air Within Reach Nationwide – But Not for Long"

"A dozen years ago, neighborhoods around Riverside, an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, had the nation’s worst soot: Every three days, on average, the air was declared unhealthful, and people were breathing twice as many microscopic particles as deemed safe.

But finally, later this year, for the first time ever, people in Riverside – and throughout the nation – will breathe air that meets an annual health standard for fine particles.

Considered inconceivable just a decade ago, achieving the federal target in Southern California and nationwide is “perhaps one of the nation’s greatest environmental success stories,” said Sam Atwood, media relations manager at the Los Angeles Basin’s air quality agency.